According to my parents, I first saw Star Wars during a family summer holiday.

Yet, according to my brain, my dad first took me to see Star Wars one night after school, on a warm, early summer, evening, and I distinctly remember being in my school uniform.

Both of these vague dates chime with what I'd believed was Star Wars' release date of June-ish 1977 (it was in fact released in America on May 25th that year, and I'd always thought we'd gotten it a month or so later).

Either way, both sets of memories can't be right; either they've got it wrong, or I've got it wrong. My money had been on them getting it wrong because, frankly, they're old, and Star Wars didn't have the same sort of impact on them as it did me. Plus, I want to believe that what I remember is the truth.

In fact... it isn't. And neither is their version: both are wrong.

Star Wars didn't open in the UK until December 27th 1977 - and even then it was only in two cinemas in central London, and it stayed that way for a month or two. I've learned this troubling, foundation-rattling, truth from a book entitled The Star Wars Phenomenon in Britain, by one Craig Stevens. 

It has upended everything I thought I knew about my life with Star Wars, and has confirmed that much of what I remember about Star Wars is merely the American version of its history.

The film didn't really start rolling out in the UK until early 1978. Some areas didn't get it for another ten months, while it had a staggered release from January onwards. Having dug into my local newspaper archives, I've since learned that it opened in what was then my local cinema on February 5th 1978 - which was the earliest I could've possibly seen it. 

Now I'm questioning everything.

Special guest Eli Silverman, from Barshens and Cheapshow, joins Biffo and Gannon to ubox their mystery mail, which includes practical jokes, weird snacks from around the world - and even more random items. A series of taste-tests ensues!

Before Nintendo got its act together, the company's NES covers adopted a sort of uniform, pixel art, approach. Though it didn't seem to "prang" the success of the NES too badly, the results were, it needs to be said, mixed.

While third-parties were slathering glorious, fully-painted, artwork on their facades, Nintendo's game covers were rather ugly, and sometimes bore little resemblance to the games they purported to portray. Suffice to say, many of its earliest NES games were subsequently re-released with new, less humiliating, artwork.

Here's a gallery of original NES game covers of said pixel art variety - but wait - the titles have been changed! Using your knowledge, reason, and a very long pole with a hook on the end, can you identify the real titles?!

Don't worry: it's just a bit of fun. Chill out, yeah?

Even after 30 years, the jury is out as to whether Sega's original template for its Master System covers were an example of clean, crisp, iconic graphic design... or a half-arsed abomination.

Either way, the artwork dd lend itself open to reinterpretation, as this gallery attests.

An exclusive interview with Edmund McMillen, creator of the games Super Meat Boy and The Binding Of Isaac, and James Interactive, creator of The Legend of Bum-Bo. Which, regrettably, gets sidetracked when Beanus takes over...

Subscribe for regular videos, and support Digitiser on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/digitiser2000

I may have already described my slightly pertinent experience with getting Rage 2 up and running. Three hours it took me to try to install the game on my PS4, before I gave up and just bought it via Stadia. I was playing within minutes.

Blah blah blah, and thanks for the backhander, Google. 

No, this isn't another Stadia-just-works polemic, but that does factor into it. This is more about why it's really important to believe, above all others, your own, first-hand, experience. And even then... take what you think you believe with a pinch of salt. 

You see, I'm really enjoying Rage 2. I'd liked the first one quite a bit, though I associate it with an odd time in my life, when I had just come out the other end of a long marriage that hadn't exactly worked, and I appreciated the chance to lose myself in its wasteland. 

I bought Rage 2 upon release, with a view to reviewing it on here, but the other reviews I read put me off. I was busy earlier this year, and fitting a big open world-game that was barely just sort of okay, into my free time wasn't something I found particularly appealing. So I left it in the shrink-wrap, until last week.

​And while I'm glad that the game has gone beyond my (admittedly very low) expectations, thanks to that lowering of this expectations due to others, I'm annoyed I ever allowed opinions to influence me.

I did a review of Google Stadia on Friday, having given my initial impressions over on Twitter. As I wrote in the review, I got a lot of... let's charitably call them "comments", from people who insisted I was either an idiot, or lying, or wrong in some way. People who, broadly, hadn't used Stadia, but who were of the unshakable belief that it doesn't work.

I've issues - quite significant ones - with what Stadia offers at the current time. The selection of games doesn't exactly 'wow', they're overpriced, and it all feels very bare bones. However, the technology - the thing which so many people told me, back in the summer when I first wrote about Stadia, wasn't going to work - does work. It works great. For me, at least. 

Now... it's important to stress that it might be that Stadia doesn't work great for everyone. Certainly, I know that Digi2000 contributor SuperBadAdvice hasn't exactly had a seamless experience with it. However, my first impressions continued to be backed up by my personal experience over the weekend, to a point where I forgot I was streaming the games.

Honestly, I had a sudden moment of realisation while playing Rage 2 (thus far, an underrated game that I can't believe I put off playing for so long) where I remembered, and was stunned. I'd been playing for hours with no noticeable lag, no stuttering, and graphics that, if they aren't 4k (the naysayers insist that Stadia upscales its visuals), as close to 4k as to be irrelevant. 

We can get into the whole not-actually-owning-your-games debate another time. I just want to talk about why so many people are still insisting that Stadia doesn't work, in the face of evidence to the contrary. Why are they trying so hard to convince themselves, without any first-hand, experience, that their belief is right? 

Let's take a look at that.

Biffo and Ashens go down the tubes, sampling some of the weirdest flavours of Pringles from around the world. These may include "egg sandwich flavour"... 

Buy official Digitiser merch from our store: https://www.redbubble.com/people/digi...

The knives are out for Google Stadia, and I struggle to understand why. Or, at least, I struggle to understand the scale of the incoherent, frothing, red mist rage being directed at it. 

Yesterday I gave my first impressions of the service on Twitter, and dozens of utter dickheads, who don't even follow me, decided to chip in with their own unwanted opinions.

They actually searched for "Stadia" to have a go at random people. Who cares about any product so much that they'd actually do that?

I even got an un-ironic "OK boomer" from one of them.

It seems to be that the issues some people have with it - which, in all honesty, they've had since Stadia was first announced - are as follows:

a) You won't be able to store your games on a shelf, where you can look at them, and get turned on by them, until you die.

b) Google is a big evil corporation and ruins everything. 

c) Google Stadia could never possibly work.

d) Something to do with them stealing your data, or identity, or something. 

e) They just really, like, hate it, for reasons they aren't emotionally articulate enough to understand. 

Kids love video games. Kids also love having their faces painted, for some reason. This gallery of children sporting video game-themed face paint should demonstrate how happy these kids are; their faces should be a picture of joy and excitement.

Instead, for some reason they all look they've been interrupted while having a poo...

Fighting Fantasy role-playing books were massive in the 1980s, yet they're remembered as much for their striking covers - some better than others - as they are their actual written content.

​Here's a gallery offering some alternative titles based upon said artwork.